Budget Busters

A riders’ advocacy group challenges TriMet to rethink its fare hikes and service cuts.

TriMet is zooming ahead with plans to close a $12 million
budget gap for next year by raising ticket prices, cutting bus service
and ending the free-rail zone. The transit agency’s board is set to
approve the $458 million budget for 2013 on June 13.

While TriMet has heard a lot of complaints about its plan, the agency hasn’t seen a serious alternative. Until now.

A neighborhood
organizing group that’s become the city’s de facto bus riders’ union is
offering a plan to preserve current bus service and blunt fare hikes.
The group, OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, says its alternative
budget plan would increase ridership by 300,000 trips next year. (OPAL
is an acronym for “Organizing People, Activating Leaders.”)

In comparison, TriMet
projects that its proposed budget could mean riders would make 1.1
million fewer trips next year—in large part because of the proposed fare
increase.

TriMet wants to end
its three-zone fare system for a flat $2.50 ticket; the agency now
charges $2.10 for a two-zone fare. OPAL proposes keeping the two-zone
fare but raising it to $2.25.

The transit agency
turned aside a previous version of OPAL’s proposal last month, though
the agency did back off its plan to ban round trips on a single fare
based on OPAL’s recommendation. But the activists presented a revised
budget to the TriMet board June 4, based largely on the transit agency’s
own projections and numbers.

OPAL executive
director Jonathan Ostar says if TriMet pushes its budget through without
considering an alternative, it can expect outrage among its ridership.
“You’re going to see a lot of people calling for a change,” he says.
“We’re really worried about them cannibalizing the system.”

OPAL’s alternative
budget closes only $11 million of the $12 million gap. Its plan includes
slashing the agency’s commitment to the Portland Streetcar and charging
fees at park-and-ride lots, which it says are used by public transit’s
most affluent riders.

The group says TriMet
can also save money by reducing the contingency fund the agency holds
to cover unexpected costs from pending arbitration with its union.
TriMet wants a $20 million contingency; OPAL suggests $15 million.

“Not many people on
the street have the luxury of their own rainy-day fund,” says Ostar.
“There’s a human element that’s missing from [TriMet’s] analysis.”

OPAL plans to make its case at the June 13 board meeting, bringing a squadron of bus riders to testify.

TriMet says it will
listen to OPAL’s proposal. Spokeswoman Mary Fetsch says cutting the
contingency fund “is not best practices,” and that the agency is
committed under a contract to its Streetcar payment. But she says TriMet
is studying the park-and-ride fees.